Good And Evil In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

To determine whether someone is good or evil the answer can often be decided by their principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad. The English writer G .K. Chesterton once stated, “I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it,” These words ring true when considering the literary work of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. The characters in both of these pieces are faced with extreme situations that call their mortality into question. Shakespeare
The Things They Carried takes place during the controversial Vietnam War where O’Brien points out that “the jungle blurs boundaries between right and wrong”. The young men that are enlisted into this war are

O’Brien shares the story of Curt Lemon’s death by describing the beauty of it instead of the horrific nature of the way he died. He does this to show that the art of storytelling greatly impacts the experience of war, similar to the way the war bends the soldiers’ perceptions of right and wrong. After Kurt Lemon’s death Rat Kiley writes a letter to Lemon’s sister expressing his admiration for his deceased friend. Instead of a heartwarming response Kiley receives nothing from the woman which is very upsetting to him. In order to rationalize his anger Kiley partakes in the senseless killing of a baby water buffalo. Unlike the story of Curt Lemon’s death the murder of the water buffalo goes into violent and graphic detail of the carnage. Although Curt Lemon and the water buffalo were similar in the fact that they were both young and innocent their deaths were portrayed in very different lights due to the nature of the story. There is another instance in The Things That Carried that is similar to Rat Kiley killing the baby water buffalo in which Azar straps a Claymore mine to Ted Lavender 's adopted orphan puppy, blows it up, and then defends himself by an appeal to his youth and innocence: " 'What 's everybody so upset about? ' Azar said. 'I mean, Christ, I 'm just a boy '. Azar’s appeal to innocence contradicts his action of killing the

It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.” How to Tell a True War Story is the only section is The Things They Carried that O’Brien specifically states is